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I am an early riser, but my uncle was an even earlier one, for I foundhim pacing up and down the lawn at the side of the house. He ran towardsme in his eagerness when he saw me come out from the door.
“Well, well!” he cried. “Did you see him?”
“An Indian with one hand?”
“Precisely.”
“Yes, I saw him”—and I told him all that occurred. When I had finished,he led the way into his study.
“We have a little time before breakfast,” said he. “It will suffice togive you an explanation of this extraordinary affair—so far as I canexplain that which is essentially inexplicable. In the first place, whenI tell you that for four years I have never passed one single night,either in Bombay, aboard ship, or here in England without my sleep beingbroken by this fellow, you will understand why it is that I am a wreckof my former self. His programme is always the same. He appears by mybedside, shakes me roughly by the shoulder, passes from my room into thelaboratory, walks slowly along the line of my bottles, and thenvanishes. For more than a thousand times he has gone through the sameroutine.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants his hand.”
“His hand?”
“Yes, it came about in this way. I was summoned to Peshawur for aconsultation some ten years ago, and while there I was asked to look atthe hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan. Thefellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyondsomewhere on the other side of Kaffiristan. He talked a bastard Pushtoo,and it was all I could do to understand him. He was suffering from asoft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints, and I madehim realize that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope tosave his life. After much persuasion he consented to the operation, andhe asked me, when it was over, what fee I demanded. The poor fellow wasalmost a beggar, so that the idea of a fee was absurd, but I answered injest that my fee should be his hand, and that I proposed to add it to mypathological collection.
“To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion, and heexplained that according to his religion it was an all-important matterthat the body should be reunited after death, and so make a perfectdwelling for the spirit. The belief is, of course, an old one, and themummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition. Ianswered him that his hand was already off, and asked him how heintended to preserve it. He replied that he would pickle it in salt andcarry it about with him. I suggested that it might be safer in mykeeping than in his, and that I had better means than salt forpreserving it. On realizing that I really intended to carefully keep it,his opposition vanished instantly. ‘But remember, sahib,’ said he, ‘Ishall want it back when I am dead.’ I laughed at the remark, and so thematter ended. I returned to my practice, and he no doubt in the courseof time was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan.
“Well, as I told you last night, I had a bad fire in my house at Bombay.Half of it was burned down, and, among other things, my pathologicalcollection was largely destroyed. What you see are the poor remains ofit. The hand of the hillman went with the rest, but I gave the matter noparticular thought at the time. That was six years ago.
“Four years ago—two years after the fire—I was awakened one night by afurious tugging at my sleeve. I sat up under the impression that myfavourite mastiff was trying to arouse me. Instead of this, I saw myIndian patient of long ago, dressed in the long grey gown which was thebadge of his people. He was holding up his stump and lookingreproachfully at me. He then went over to my bottles, which at that timeI kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave agesture of anger and vanished. I realized that he had just died, andthat he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb insafety for him.
“Well, there you have it all, Dr. Hardacre. Every night at the same hourfor four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple thingin itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone. It hasbrought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for theexpectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of mywife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is thebreakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it faredwith you last night. We are both much indebted to you for yourgallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune whenwe share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures usas to our sanity, which we are sometimes driven to question.”
This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided to me—a storywhich to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility, butwhich, after my experience of the night before, and my previousknowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact.I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of myreading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised myhost and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by thenext train.
“My dear doctor,” cried Sir Dominick in great distress, “you make mefeel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality inintruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my ownburden.”
“It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London,” I answered;“but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience oflast night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about toask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night inyour laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again.”
My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but myfears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was backin my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming mymemory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrestedmy attention when I read it.
“In the case of earth-bound spirits,” said my authority, “some onedominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to holdthem to this material world. They are the amphibia of this life and ofthe next, capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passesfrom land to water. The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to alife which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion. Avarice,revenge, anxiety, love, and pity have all been known to have thiseffect. As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish, and when thewish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes. There are many casesupon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors, andalso their disappearance when their wishes have been fulfilled, or insome cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected.”
“_A reasonable compromise effected_”—those were the words which I hadbrooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original.No actual atonement could be made here—but a reasonable compromise! Imade my way as fast as a train could take me to the Shadwell Seamen’sHospital, where my old friend Jack Hewett was house-surgeon. Withoutexplaining the situation I made him understand exactly what it was thatI wanted.
“A brown man’s hand!” said he, in amazement. “What in the world do youwant that for?”
“Never mind. I’ll tell you some day. I know that your wards are full ofIndians.”
“I should think so. But a hand——” He thought a little and then struck abell.
“Travers,” said he to a student-dresser, “what became of the hands
ofthe Lascar which we took off yesterday? I mean the fellow from the EastIndia Dock who got caught in the steam winch.”
“They are in the _post-mortem_ room, sir.”
“Just pack one of them in antiseptics and give it to Dr. Hardacre.”
And so I found myself back at Rodenhurst before dinner with this curiousoutcome of my day in town. I still said nothing to Sir Dominick, but Islept that night in the laboratory, and I placed the Lascar’s hand inone of the glass jars at the end of my couch.
So interested was I in the result of my experiment that sleep was out ofthe question. I sat with a shaded lamp beside me and waited patientlyfor my visitor. This time I saw him clearly from the first. He appearedbeside the door, nebulous for an instant, and then hardening into asdistinct an outline as any living man. The slippers beneath his greygown were red and heelless, which accounted for the low, shuffling soundwhich he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowlyalong the line of bottles until he paused before that which containedthe hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering withexpectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a facewhich was convulsed with fury and disappointment, he hurled it down onthe floor. There was a crash which resounded through the house, and whenI looked up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my doorflew open and Sir Dominick rushed in.
“You are not hurt?” he cried.
